Our next direction was Abruzzo. Why? Another magazine article about the New Tuscany!!! so we decided to have a reconnaissance visit between Abruzzo and Marche

We flew over and stayed in a great B&B Colle Moro near Città Sant'Angelo Abruzzo. Colle Moro is a farm with two large modern house which make great accommodation. Andrea the owner is very helpful and we had a great stay.

Città Sant'Angelo is near Pescara which is a fairly large not too charming town. We drove around quite extensively and found a few nice possible areas.

We then drove up to Atri and absolutely loved it. This is a spectacular little town that has such historical significance it is shown on the maps in the Doge's Palace in Venice. It has a lovely feel to it and we could very easily picture ourselves living near to here.

On the outskirts of Atri My wife found a dream home.


The views toward the sea are lovely




On the tree outside




As we were running on a pretty tight schedule we had to go on to Marche. We were booked into
Locanda I Piceni in Ortezzano. This is a very nice small hotel run by a very handsome chef (who my wife did her best to flirt with). The food is excellent and it has a lovely view from the balcony.



We had a bit of a look around this area but were not too impressed. Little did we know how big this area would feature in our lives two years later.

From here we went on to Fano. We both really liked this city. It has a gorgeous piazza and passagiata is a real event


From here we traveled to Cartocetto and stayed with Axel and Judith at the very nice B&B Villa Cartoceto.

Axel and Judith also have an excellent restaurant Osteria del Cardinale. They are charming hosts and it was a pleasure staying with them. Cartocetto it is a wealthy little village with tremendous charm and apparently produces some of the highest quality olive oil in the world.

The "dream" house that we had seen kept bugging us and eventually we decided to drive all the way back and see it. This was an epic 4 hour journey along the autostrada held up by an accident. Eventually we got there only to find that the house was not for sale and the For Sale sign actually related to a concrete monstrosity further down the road.


Oh well, only a day wasted so on we went.


The whole journey was a success as it gave us good ideas as to where to concentrate our search